Connecting the Three Currencies of Caucus Blocs

You’ve probably been taught to find allies during unmoderated caucus so you can form a team to draft a resolution. But if you want to win awards, you have to do more than caucus – you have to connect.

You know what it feels like when someone makes a connection with you. They have either shared with you:

An emotional currency (generosity in friendship or mutual excitement),

An intellectual currency (an interesting idea or common belief), or

A resource currency (putting in their time or effort to help).

Sharing emotional currency in a caucus bloc (Photo credit: Stanford)

Every delegate brings the three currencies – emotional, intellectual, and resource – with them to the conference. Bloc leaders though, need to identify the bloc’s wealth in the three currencies – what kind of people, ideas, and resources they have at their disposal.

More specifically, bloc leaders want to look for people that have generosity, goodwill, and trust and are willing to share those with you in order to complete the draft resolution. Bloc leaders want to look for ideas that are mutually agreeable and substantively strong. And bloc leaders want to look for the resourcefulness of each delegate, meaning what type of skills, research, and energy they can contribute or potentially recruit into the team to get the actual writing of the resolution done.

In Model UN, winning awards is about managing those currencies within a team. Good leaders are good project managers – they connect teammates within their bloc to people, ideas, and resources. And they know how to get the most out of each member while making them feel valued as part of the team.